Home » Health » “Legitimate claims, the future of the public hospital is threatened”, estimates the emergency physician Louis Soulas

“Legitimate claims, the future of the public hospital is threatened”, estimates the emergency physician Louis Soulas

The mobilization of interns, who demonstrated in Paris this Saturday, June 19 and went on a 45-hour strike, carries “legitimate claims”, affirmed on franceinfo Louis Soulas, head of the Samu-Smur-Emergency department at the Rennes University Hospital and vice-president of Samu Urgences de France (SUdF). The interns denounce their professional exhaustion and demand resources, as well as the limitation of their working time. Louis Soulas believes that it is necessary to “break this infernal circle” and pleads for “global upgrading” of all caregivers. Otherwise, “it is the future of the public hospital that is threatened”, warns the emergency doctor.

franceinfo: Do ​​you see the fatigue of interns in your department?

Louis Soulas : Absolutely. What the interns express is a general fatigue of all the medical and nursing professions who work in hospitals. And for interns, it is particularly worrying, because the problem of working time that is highlighted today, existed before the Covid. This was accentuated with the Covid, because we were extremely in demand from all professions, including interns. Today, their claims are quite legitimate.

How does the internal work overload translate?

I take care of an emergency service. In Samu and in emergencies, we are used to working continuously. The working time problem is certainly different from other services which are still on half-days. And I think there is not the same workload in all departments of a hospital. In the emergency department, we are very vigilant about working time and recovery time after on-call periods, which is not the case everywhere today. For interns, the same rules are applied, ie no more than 48 hours of working time in the departments. But we still exceeded the limits with the Covid. We also know that in services, such as surgery, they are in much greater demand than we are. I believe that, unfortunately, we have become accustomed in hospitals to rely on this resource to fill in a little the lack of medical means, which we know in a chronic way.

Is the risk that it will be passed on to the patients, with medical errors?

Of course. We too often forget that interns are in training, that they should not be at the forefront of decision-making. Which is not the case. At the same time, it is necessary that they are directly responsible for the care of patients, under the supervision of a senior. But it is true that we know the risk of too much working time. It is the risk of error and above all, it is the quality of life at work. It is still a shame that an intern in training leaves the hospital after a burnout or because he considers that it is too hard. Today, this infernal cycle should absolutely be broken.

Within the framework of the Ségur de la santé, interns obtained a salary increase and follow-up with medical visits. How can we go further now?

I believe that it is a global revaluation of the work of doctors, interns, caregivers, which is necessary. The Ségur has been a hope for all of us. We have seen that after the Covid, we did not completely achieve the objectives we hoped for. And I think we have a problem of lack of revaluation of the work of caregivers. What is very worrying is that we are now realizing that there are a lot of doctors who will leave the hospital to switch to other modes of exercise. And it is the future of the public hospital that is still threatened today. What interns in the public hospital express is a very high risk of losing practitioners. Today, hospital attractiveness for young doctors does not exist.

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